“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Beginning in June 1974, then, while writing notes and appendixes for Volume 1 of “Unknown”, and taking Seth’s dictation for Volume 2, I spent eight months producing the art work for Jane’s Adventures in Consciousness and for her book of poetry, Dialogues of the Soul and Mortal Self in Time; I finished all of those drawings in January 1975. In the meantime Jane completed Adventures in August 1974, and started Psychic Politics that October. In March 1975 we took time out to move from the apartment house in downtown Elmira to our “hill house” just outside the city. Jane finished dictating Volume 2 of “Unknown” for Seth in April 1975, and I started my notes and appendixes for it. In July 1975 Seth began The Nature of the Psyche: Its Human Expression, and in December of that year Jane initiated work on her own The World View of Paul Cézanne: A Psychic Interpretation. She finished Politics in February 1976, and Cézanne in September; Politics was published that September also. I completed my own writing for Volume 1 of “Unknown” in October. Our 16-year-old cat, Willy, died early in November, and two days later we obtained a kitten, Willy Two (or Billy, as we soon came to call him), from an area humane society. I finished typing the manuscript for Volume 1 late in November, spent December checking it, and mailed it to Prentice-Hall early in January 1977.

In January we obtained an unlisted telephone number, because we could no longer handle the 600-or-so calls a month that were coming in. Later in the month, Jane started writing James. In February 1977 we received from Prentice-Hall the copyedited manuscript for Volume 1 of “Unknown” Reality. (Copyediting is one of the earlier editorial stages a book goes through on its way to publication, and is meant to study all of the work that Jane and I and her editor, Tam Mossman, have already done on the manuscript: Before it’s set into type, a reader who works independently of the publishing firm carefully checks the manuscript for grammar, contradictions, facts, consistency, and so forth, and makes suggestions for whatever changes he or she thinks are desirable. Jane and I are free, of course, to reject any alterations we don’t agree with.) In March we checked the copyedited manuscript for Cézanne. Seth finished dictating Psyche early in April. A few days later we began correcting page proofs for Volume 1 of “Unknown.”

In addition to these activities, Jane conducted her weekly ESP classes until we moved in March 1975, and kept up with her considerable correspondence. Her mail is accumulating at such a rate that I think it’s becoming a valuable social document in its own right. An extremely interesting study could be done on the personal and social factors behind the great variety of responses her work has generated. We have on file most of the letters we’ve received over the years.